Wardee Harmon lives in Southwest Oregon with her husband and their three children. They raise a dairy cow, chickens and goats, and garden co-operatively with friends.

Besides homeschooling her children, making cheese, old-fashioned pickles and lots of other fermented foods, Wardeh teaches online classes in the fundamentals of traditional cooking, sourdough, cultured dairy, cheesemaking and lacto-fermentation at GNOWFGLINS eCourse. She blogs at GNOWFGLINS.com sharing recipes, videos and anecdotes of her family’s life.

GNOWFGLINS is an acronym to show how Wardee and her family enjoy “God’s Natural, Organic, Whole Foods, Grown Locally, In Season.”

Wardee is the author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Fermenting Foods. Which is a book with over 100 delicious fermentation recipes! Check it out here.

Here’s their story…

Baby A’s Birth

I was 21 when I became pregnant with A. Having been a vegetarian, I started craving meat and ate lots of Wendy’s chicken nuggets. We would go on to call A “nugget” because she was probably mostly chicken nuggets! We knew nothing at the time about a nourishing pregnancy diet. To put it mildly, I wasn’t eating well.

We checked out all the usual birth books and videos from the library, and my husband got pretty interested in home birthing. I, however, would have none of it. I wanted a doctor and a hospital because I was scared and not ready for doing anything outside the norm. Even so, I knew I wanted my hospital birth to be as natural as possible — i.e., no pain killers. To continue reading this story, click here.

Baby B’s Birth

Not much later, I was pregnant with Baby B and my diet was not improved. Fast food, processed food, bad fats, sugar, you name it. However, I was ready to fight hard for a natural birth. I’m sure my husband was glad.

We started a Bradley childbirth class and within a few meetings had decided that home birth was for us. For me, it was mostly the fact that interventions lead to more interventions which tend to lead to C-Sections. I wanted to get out of that equation altogether. Plus, I wanted to stay home to give birth. To continue reading this story, click here.

Baby C’s Birth

With every baby, I got more and more confident. Jeff had been ready to think outside the box from the beginning, but I needed more time.

This time (with Baby C), we had no HMO for a fall-back but we knew we wanted J again as our midwife. She encouraged us to seek out a doctor who would be backup, just in case we ended up at the emergency room.

I called the doctor who had done my C-Section with A and he said no way, no how would he touch a home birth with a 10-foot pole. Well, he probably didn’t use those words, but that was the gist. To continue reading this story, click here.